Renewal 8 - War Council (6 page)

Another left turn had us barreling down Sixteenth Model Road, on a long loop back to the Carroll farm. It seemed like a very few minutes before Arturo dropped us by the gate. His job was now to drive the loop in reverse, coming back into the battle zone from the highway. Then, Arturo would drive around Eugene’s camp like a maniac, creating as much distracting chaos as he could manage.

Meanwhile we set out at a jog, aiming almost directly for the enemy camp by way of our old treehouse. We all rubbed the old maple as we trotted by, for luck I guess, and angled to the right. We were following the flat top of the terrain until we could bury ourselves in the trees above the river. Then we would slow down and see what we could see.

***

Beth had no intention of firing that gun. She sat high enough in the maple to watch the blurry edge of sunlight retreating from left to right. She was the only one of her family who had any idea if the plan was working. After David fired into the trees across the road, and her boys took off in the station wagon, she could hear the uproar in the cannibal camp. A trio of the dirtiest men she had ever seen made its way out to the road in careful skips and leaps. A stocky, broad shouldered man took a final look and walked directly up to the tree that held David’s sign. Beth maneuvered so that she was behind the main bole of the tree relative to those three men, and her rifle was pointed in their general direction. It wasn’t a planned shift in position; it just seemed to make sense given that those men were the closest threat to the lone woman in the tree.

The man read the sign, and waved to one of his companions. The second man read it, and they spoke briefly. In the end, the sign failed. The first man flipped a bird at the sign and let the gesture wander across the river to Eugene’s camp. He finished with a jerk of his soot-blackened hand and all three turned back to their camp. Beth had no intention of firing unless she was defending herself or her family, but she had no way to let her husband know that he would get no help from the dirty cannibals. She didn’t think much beyond that panicked realization. Beth simply laid the glowing cross hairs on the back of the second man and pulled the trigger.

A “whisk-punch” sound accompanied the hunting round in its high velocity path through the man’s torso, neatly severing his spine and destroying a number of valuable organs on its way through. The leader of the cannibal band saw the round hit the ground ten feet in front of his brother first. He didn’t register the lethal shot until he heard the body fold to the gravel driveway. Then came the sound of the shot. It echoed around the river valley until he could only guess at its source. His guess was close enough to put the shooter in Eugene’s camp.

Where the sign had failed, Beth succeeded. Three minutes later, fifty armed cannibals poured out of the woods and trotted down the road to cross the bridge. Beth felt a moment of practical pride over the queasiness of what she had just done. When it comes to protecting your family, she thought, you do what you have to do.

***

The sun was on the verge of disappearing behind us when Dad held up his hand. We stopped and dropped into the leaf-bare bushes. We were about seventy yards short of the road. Arturo had just returned to the scene and was doing a fine job of blasting the station wagon around the field in front of the camp, spraying mud and sod as he went. Just for added confusion, he was randomly firing out the driver’s side window. Unfortunately, even an ex-Marine would have trouble hitting anything with the car spinning and lurching through the lumpy grass. Even better, a shadowy band of shapes was approaching up the hill from the bridge. They were being relatively cautious, but they were not following any of the tactics that Arturo had painstakingly taught all of us. The used no real cover; they simply huffed and puffed up the steep slope carrying a motley assemblage of guns and blades and garden tools. The leader was obvious. He stood tall and continually waved his band forward. When he had a clear line of sight on Eugene’s camp, he yelled a wordless battle cry and started running across the open grass. His ragged band of cannibals roared in response and joined the charge. Idiots.

Thanks to our earlier escapades, Eugene’s men were alert and ready to fight. They may not have made all the connections, but Arturo was immediately pegged for a distraction rather than a threat. The men who were firing on him turned and ran to better locations in order to take shots at the cannibals in full charge. That left Arturo free to stop the car and use it for cover. We saw his rifle barrel slide across the hood and join the chorus of barking weapons. Thanks to the man-eating swarm, Arturo was dropping Eugene’s men with ease. Unfortunately for the cannibals, Eugene’s men were armed with appropriate equipment for the fight. Most of them had no trouble killing the attackers.

Cannibals died rapidly under a hail of NATO rounds. I almost felt sorry for them. We were in a terrible position to keep them alive. We wanted them alive long enough to thin Eugene’s camp down to something we could handle, but they were doing a poor job of it. The cannibals were directly between our position and the mass of Eugene’s fighters. Arturo, on the other hand, was doing a good job of leveling the playing field, but the remaining baker’s dozen of cannibals were not enough. Dad gave us a “follow me” wave and ran out to the ditch on our side of the road. He dove in and set up to fire. Kirk followed him step for step, but I took a few more seconds to do the mental math before I ran out of the bushes. We were spotted, no thanks to me.

It was my first time under direct massed gunfire, and I’ll be honest. I froze. I could almost feel the air splitting as bullets hissed by overhead. All I could do was bury my face in the muddy ditch and whimper. Each crack of Kirk and Dad’s rifle made me jump as if I had been hit. After what seemed like minutes, Kirk kicked me in the shoulder, and that was enough to snap me out of my locked state. I looked up, saw that the situation was almost exactly the same as it was when I dove into the ditch, and aimed my rifle. Snap! Kick. Aim.

It was like the stupid dance we had at school. All the boys stood along the wall, terrified of all the little girls standing around the punch bowl, waiting for us to grow a pair. Finally, the PE teacher herded us over and paired us up by main force of will, and we began to dance. Four bars of Taylor Swift later, that dancing thing wasn’t so bad.

So – I fell into a rhythm of aiming and firing, just far enough away to make the whole process just as impersonal as a dance full of kids waiting for puberty to hit with hormonal power. I honestly don’t know how well I did, but I guess collectively we did well enough, because the next thing I knew, we were  crossing the road, and Arturo was limping forward to our left. Then, it became personal.

We jumped over dead and dying bodies on the way in. Kirk just naturally fell to cleanup duties. His 9mm cracked at anything that was still moving as we made our way into the camp. We took cover behind a spreading oak tree that marked the original western border of the property. Arturo waved from a similar location on the north side. There were still several cannibals on the loose among the tents. Judging from the harsh language and rough voice we were hearing, Eugene was still among the living as well. The plan was to wait until the two groups had done as much damage to each other as possible before we engaged whoever was left.

We heard a diesel engine rattle to life, and Arturo fired an entire clip in that direction. The engine kept running but it was idling. Minutes went by without a single gunshot from the camp. Arturo began to move in, using dead shrubbery for broken cover. Dad took the cue and we proceeded forward. For me, it was all part of the dance by then, but I still had a profound urge to take a leak. Not a fun way to dance.

Quickly we were among the tents, with me trailing Dad and Kirk. I knew we were looking to make sure that Eugene was dead, and to free whoever was being held in the barn-shed. I heard nothing but our feet and a painful moan off to the right. Suddenly, an arm was around my neck and I was hoisted off the ground. My feet tried to run, but only made a few scuffling steps before they lost all purchase and flopped back against whoever was holding me. I dropped my gun by reflex. I made a pitiful squeaking noise as my bladder threatened to give way.

Of course it was Eugene. He called out to my father. “Mr. Carter. Seems like you owe me a son. I think I’ll take this one. How about you boys drop your weapons now?”

Dad turned slowly and let his rifle fall to the ground. Kirk took a few seconds longer. It took a hard elbow from my father before he followed suit. Kirk dropped his handgun and slid the strap of his rifle off his shoulder. The gun made a clattering sound as it hit the ground, butt first. Dad held up his hands in a pleading motion, and started to speak.

“Don’t bother. You should’ve thought about that before you killed my boy,” Eugene said, spraying my ear with his warm spittle. My eyes darted to where I hoped Arturo would be, but he was not in sight. Eugene wrestled around with his right arm until he had his own revolver pressed against my head. His left was still wrapped around my throat.

“Listen, Eugene...” Dad said. “You attacked...”

“I don’t give shit! This is all mine. I found it. I took it. Mine!” Eugene was breathing fast and hard in my ear all of a sudden. I was thinking with unnatural clarity, my senses on overdrive. Apparently, Dad had touched a nerve. Maybe this guy still had a conscience in there somewhere. Then the hammer clicked back, and I decided probably not.

His hand scraped my neck as it slid away to the left. I dropped to the ground without any plan except to hide. I heard a gunshot close enough to set my ear into a ringing reset mode. I heard an impact, a larger impact to the side, and a distant rifle shot thumping hollowly around the valley. I looked to my left and Eugene was down, writhing on the ground and smacking himself repeatedly on the butt. I was confused.

Kirk moved in a blur, kicking the revolver away from Eugene’s hand. Dad grabbed his rifle and pointed it at the man’s head. Kirk was already gone. He had picked up his own weapon and was searching the camp at high speed, just in case anyone else was waiting in ambush. No one living was there.

Eugene was screaming by then, a foul stream of profanity that made my dad wince and twitch, particularly around his trigger finger. In Eugene’s defense, he had good reason. I had no idea where my mother was aiming, but the bullet passed directly through both of Eugene Curfman’s buttocks, which must have been very painful when I think about it.

“Shut up, Eugene!” Dad shouted. “Or, I’ll be happy to shut you up myself.”

Eugene responded with his usual diplomacy. “I’ll kill you! I will find you, and I will kill you! No. I’ll kill your family, and then I’ll kill you!”

“In that case, I think I’ll just wait until you bleed out through your ass,” Dad said. “I really hate to admit it, but it’s kind of fun watching you suffer.”

“My men will...”

“I don’t see any men, Eugene. They’re all dead. You got some more around here?”

“Oh, I got more. I got lots more, and they’ll kill you. They’ll find you, and....”

“Ok! I think I got the gist of it,” Dad replied. “Bill, you and Kirk go check out that shed. Art? We all clear?”

“Clear as far as I can see!” Arturo answered, stepping into sight.

Eugene rolled around, getting his first look at Arturo. “You brought a spic? A goddam spic?”

“That’s enough, Eugene,” my dad said calmly, and just as calmly, pulled the trigger.

Dad came up behind Kirk and me as we were trying to figure out how to open the heavy padlock on the shed door. Dad went back to Eugene’s body, and dug around until he found a key ring. He came back and tried the keys, but none of them worked on the lock. He went to the truck and looked behind the seat. He returned with a huge screwdriver, and simply pried the hasp loose from the wood and particle board doors.

The twilight was getting deep as the doors swung open. Anything could have been inside. We had our weapons pointed into the shadows, but we took a step or two back just in case. “Arturo! Need a light over here,” Dad called.

Arturo limped over, pulling a mini-flashlight from his belt. He snapped it on and shined it into the shed. Huddled as far from the door as possible were three grown women and a young girl with copper red hair, appearing about my age. They were all completely naked, and all terrified.

Kirk and I could not have spoken if our lives depended on it, but Dad said, “It’s ok. We’re not going to hurt you.” They did not react at all, except to jam themselves further into the back corners.

“Bill, Kirk. Go through the tents. Find some clothes. Anything will do. Go!” Dad ordered. We took off at a run. “I’m sorry, ladies. I know you’ve been through a lot. This is my friend Arturo. We’ll just look the other way until we get you some clothes.”

Kirk and found plenty of clothes, mostly in the form of big flannel shirts, and mostly in need of serious laundry services, but we brought back a double armload as fast as we could.

“Just set it inside, boys. Then turn around so they can get dressed.” Dad spun his hand in a circle to emphasize his point.

While we waited, Arturo walked out to get the station wagon. He pulled it through opening in the fence and backed it up near the shed. As far as we could tell without looking, none of the women had made a move yet. Dad tried again. “Listen, ladies. We’re not part of the group that locked you up. I have a wife and four kids. We’re not in the business of hurting people unless they try to hurt us first. It’ll be ok. Just get dressed and I promise, we’ll take you to a safe place where you can get warm and eat some decent food.”

Nothing happened.

“Ok. Arturo, you think you can guard these women alone? I’ll take the boys and get Beth out of the tree. Maybe she can reassure them...”

“Sure, David. But if you hear any gunfire, come running,” Arturo said.

“You can count on it. Boys, in the car.”

We passed two cannibals on the way up the hill on the far side of the bridge. They must have been smart enough to hide when their leader tried to charge across an open field. They made no threatening moves. Maybe they had seen us killing the same guys they were supposed to kill. Maybe they were just the smartest cannibals. Dad pulled up on the side of the road right across from their driveway, and sent Kirk and me to get Mom while he watched the car.